slavery in pennsylvania
Chester County tnt (this and that)
free persons of color
West Marlborough Township
Obituaries of David Alexander and Sip Richardson, 1869
"Death Notice ALEXANDER
"In West Marlborough, Chester County, Pa., on the evening of the 22d ult.,
DAVID ALEXANDER, (colored man,) at the very advanced age of 105 years. He
was born in the State of Maryland in 1764, a slave. Being an honest industrious
man, and of good reputation, his habits of frugality and temperance enabled him
more than a half century ago, to purchase his own freedom and that of his wife
and two daughters. He then removed to Chester county, and has long been a
resident of this township, where he peacefully closed a long and useful life,
having come to his grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his
season. Another relic of olden times was Sip Richardson, (also colored) whose
death was noticed in the Village Record a few years back, and then stated to be
103 years; he was also a native of Maryland, and a neighbor and playmate with
Alexander in the long gone by days of their boyhood. He also came to this
county, before Alexander, and lived very many years in this township, a neighbor
and contemporary of one who had with him, as it were side by side, wielded the
cares and partaken of the pleasures of life for a period of manhood exceeding
eighty years. (Sip died at his daughter's in an adjoining township and was
David's senior by about three years). These old Patriarchal men retained their
faculties astonishingly. And it was interesting to hear them relate
circumstances and things, as they were long before almost any of the oldest men
now living, were born."Notes
In the 1860 census, Scippio Richardson is living
with the Charles Fray family. Fray, an African American ice-cream maker in
London Grove, had a wife and five children. Richardson listed his age at
98. I was unable to find David Alexander in the 1860 census.
Sources
Village Record, 02
February 1869.
1850 Census, Middletown Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, page 184.
1860 Census of London Grove Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, page 295.
chester
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